In amongst the bedwetting on Fiver web there are 1 or 2 decent, reasoned comments. This is the best IMHO
Understandably there is a lot of disappointment about the way things went last night but focusing solely on the alleged errors of the match officials rather begs the point.
We are not scoring goals and it seems we cannot score goals. What we saw from Saints last night seemed more like desperation to me than a grand plan to put things right. From the outset we seemed to be playing a very flexible system based on fast running and frequent positional interchanges where the front four were popping up all over the place. Even the MF duo and the full backs joined in the mix at times. The nominal starting positions on the team sheet served only to misdirect the opposition. We had a lot of the ball and Villa couldn’t get a foothold but we never seemed to have clear plan of where it was all supposed to lead…
Initially it all was very dynamic and exciting and looked as though it might achieve good results but as time went by more and more it resembled a bunch of headless chickens left to their own devices and to making it up as they went along. As pretty as it looked there were few occasions when we got through their lines and too many misdirected speculative crosses into the box were easily defended by a stout and determined Villa defence. We lost because we just did not know how to unlock a packed defence that too many times forced us to play down the wings and resort to lobbing balls into the box where we were always second best.
Deflecting the whole debacle to a couple of admittedly dodgy VAR decisions avoids confronting the reality of our situation. We have very few papers of genuine quality who can make a difference to the outcome of games. Although he is a figure of hate here Grealish is the sort of player that we do not have. I am not suggesting that we have a team of mostly hard working journeymen but it is beginning look like that. Even Ings looked pedestrian last night and the only player that deservesd any credit was Oriol Romeu who did what he always does in his usual dogged and determined way but he is not a match winner.
Has Ralph taking this bunch of players as far as he can? As frustration mounts and results continue to disappoint maybe he and others are beginning to ask this question.